Two overhead garage doors at the home of Robert and Joan Bundtzen were destroyed by a brown bear attempting to enter the garage of their Stuckagain Heights home early Monday morning October 29, 2012 in east Anchorage.

Two overhead garage doors at the home of Robert and Joan Bundtzen were destroyed by a brown bear attempting to enter the garage of their Stuckagain Heights home early Monday morning October 29, 2012 in east Anchorage.

Two overhead garage doors at the home of Robert and Joan Bundtzen were destroyed by a brown bear attempting to enter the garage of their Stuckagain Heights home early Monday morning October 29, 2012 in east Anchorage.

"We were hoping the chicken-eating bear was doing break-ins," said Fish and Game area wildlife biologist Jessy Coltrane on Wednesday.

But a second bear -- still on the loose -- is likely responsible for the coop mayhem, she said.

The bear killed Tuesday night was an adult male that Coltrane estimates weighed between 700-800 pounds.

Biologists said they believe it had attacked at least three garage doors and side doors in the Stuckagain Heights area in recent days, causing thousands of dollars of property damage.

A bear trying to break down garage doors is "very unusual," Coltrane said.

The behavior was particularly confounding, Coltrane said, because the houses hit didn't have any obvious bear-luring attractants such as chickens or open garbage containers.

"(The homeowners) weren't doing anything wrong," she said.

GRIZZLY AT THE GARAGE DOOR

Joan Bundtzen and her husband woke Monday at 5 a.m. to police at their front door.

Sometime in the early hours of the morning a large bear had savaged their garage doors to get inside, officers said.

They found the sturdy double doors on their Stuckagain Heights log home folded up like paper. The bear had ripped off sockets and bent in panels, leaving claw marks on the door and paint cans splayed across the floor.

Left curiously untouched inside: Dozens of bags of dog food stacked against a wall.

Bundtzen and her husband, veteran Iditarod musher Robert Bundtzen, slept through the whole thing.

Because the family keeps a full dog yard on their property at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac, they are used to sleeping through disturbances, she said Wednesday.

Joan Bundtzen, a retired clinical pathologist, couldn't shake the thought of what might have happened if the bear had continued inside the garage.

"The idea that a grizzly bear can rip out doors and walk right upstairs to where you are sleeping is a sobering thought," she said.